The increasing amounts of signal transmissions sent over radio access networks is acting to degrade the experience of the radio access network's end-users by increasing latency and lowering individual throughput. Some methods to avoid or at least decrease the degradation experienced by end-users of radio access networks have been developed. Some of these methods may include but are not limited to coordinated multipoint (CoMP) downlink (DL) joint transmission (JT), CoMP uplink (UL) joint reception (JR), DL load balancing, and UL load balancing. Methods such as ULJR, UL offloading and others may include transmitting UL transmissions from mobile terminals to multiple neighboring base stations. When a UL transmission is sent to multiple neighboring base stations, each of the multiple neighboring base stations may receive and/or process a portion of or all of the overall UL transmission.
In some circumstances, a base station of a radio access network may have a scheduled time window for receiving UL transmissions from a mobile terminal. Because of propagation delays of the UL transmissions, resulting from the UL transmissions traveling over a physical distance, mobile terminals may transmit the UL transmissions in advance of the scheduled time window such that the UL transmissions arrives at the base station during the scheduled time window. In some circumstances, time advance information may be transmitted from the base station to the mobile terminal and the mobile terminal may advance the UL transmissions accordingly, from the mobile terminal by a time advance value to compensate for propagation delays.
Circumstances where UL transmissions are sent to multiple neighboring base stations from a mobile terminal may pose a challenge because the mobile terminal may be expected to simultaneously accommodate a different time advance for each neighboring base station that receives a UL transmission. For example, a mobile terminal may be closer propagation-channel-wise to a first base station than a second base station as the mobile terminal transmits a UL transmission to both base stations. If the UL transmission is time advanced for the first base station, the portion of the UL transmission received by the second base station may not arrive at the second base station within its scheduled time window.
The subject matter claimed herein is not limited to embodiments that solve any disadvantages or that operate only in environments such as those described above. Rather, this background is only provided to illustrate one example technology area where some embodiments described herein may be practiced.